Sicha – Continuing the Conversation

Kaddish, Judaism’s most famous response to loss, did not start out to serve that purpose.  Phrases that became elements of Kaddish were used in ancient Israel to celebrate the end of a session of communal study.  Their recitation marked a transition from learning to living, creating a ritual moment that might impart the strength of the gathering to each of its individuals.  This moment of Kaddish, meaning, sanctification and dedication, said:  It is time to take our learning from this place and infuse it into the world.  Remember!  You alone must do it, but you do not do it alone.

Kaddish continued to develop as a marker of transition moments in community prayer.  In a short form, it marked the division between internal parts of a prayer service.  In a longer form, Kaddish celebrated the conclusion of community worship.  At that point in history, there was not yet a “Mourner’s Kaddish.”

In one of the earliest known prayer books, the great Babylonian sage, Sa’adiah Gaon (10^th century), noted the Kaddish forms of public worship.  He underscored the importance of the most ancient “Scholar’s Kaddish” recited at the conclusion of study and disapprovingly observed that there were some who insisted on reciting this Kaddish at a grave.

Ironically, it is Sa’adiah’s skeptical comment that offers the first witness to what has become one of Judaism’s strongest rituals.  Although the greatest leader of his day frowned upon it, the “Mourner’s Kaddish” is a testimony to the religious imagination and creativity of the people who needed a ritual moment that could respond to a powerful need.  Once again, Kaddish was to mark a moment of transition when profound reflection must open to living.

Living in the world is an important Kaddish motif, literally beginning and ending the shortest form of the Kaddish:  May the great name be magnified and sanctified in the world/b’almah, it begins.  This Kaddish ends with the hope that efforts to extol the Great Name might exceed all blessings and songs, acclamations and consolations spoken in the world/b’almah.

Precisely in the middle of this short Kaddish appears a contrasting use of the same Aramaic word, almah:  May the Great Name be blessed forever/l’almah and forever/u-l’almey almayah.  Two meanings of the same word, world and forever, capture an essential feature of the human condition:  We resolve to live in our world, with our losses, even as we aspire to a better future.

This is not to say that such a plan is easy.  It is, perhaps, easier to remain in a state of mourning than to venture forth; it is more enticing to stay in the dust-free environment of the House of Study where the world is learned, not lived.

Says the poet, Wallace Stevens:  “The way through the world is more difficult to find than the way beyond it.”  Kaddish summons the mourner to the dignity of responding to loss with creative and productive living in the world/b’almah, not trying to suspend it or to ignore it.

The mourner who recites the Kaddish prompts the community to say “amen” four times—twice in response to living in the world and twice in an epilogue that looks to the future.  At first, the epilogue continues in the Kaddish Aramaic of the everyday world and finally, soaring into Hebrew and into the heavens:

May there be abundant peace from the heavens and life for us… May the One who makes peace in his heights, make peace for us and for all Israel, and we say: Amen.

One who rises to recite the “Mourner’s Kaddish” stands as a heroic example within community that one continues to live in the presence of loss in the world/b’almah, even as one anticipates a better future/l’almah.

(Click here for text of Mourner’s Kaddish)

(Click here for an earlier conversation with the Kaddish)

Between things falling and things taking place
Is there a place for the lingering, for the lasting?
Between things dying and things that are living
Is there a place for tranquil home life,
For one to sit in place, seeing, being seen?

I decide, a solitary judge sitting on the bench
No plaintiffs and no accused
Only lots of witness, lots of testimonies.

In my youth I knew about human sickness,
I understood sick animals.
As an adult I learned that trees also
Can be sick, suffering in silence.
I will yet live to understand a sick rock,
A suffering stone, a languishing ledge.
So will the world come full circle within me.  The inanimate
Speak silence and the living will ultimately be silent.  This is my place
And so may I be magnified [et-gadel] and so may I be sanctified [et-kadesh].

The final line (which is also the title) of Yehuda Amichai’s poem imitates the well-known cadence of Judaism’s most famous statement made in the presence of grief:  yit-gadal v’yit- kadash—May [the great Name] be magnified and sanctified.   Clearly mindful of the Kaddish/Sanctification, the poet offers a personal journey that grows into a resolve to live in the presence of loss:  Not yit-gadal /may it [the great name] be magnified, but et-gadel/may I be magnified, strengthened in the presence of loss.

(Click here for Amichai poem in Hebrew and English)

Overwhelmed by a world of change and loss from which there is no respite, the poet asks:  How can there be room for anything else, for lingering, for tranquility?

As a presiding judge, he is ready and perhaps eager to assign guilt in order to explain loss.  There is no lack of witness or testimony.  But loss, sickness and suffering are not matters of justice.  No sentence metes out meaning; no verdict or explanation ensures the tranquility that he seeks.

Nonetheless, witness and testimony have their effect:  There is a growing awareness of suffering and loss and their languages, including the language of silence which is the native tongue of the inanimate and the final language of the living.

So will the world come full circle/yit-agel.  Yit-agel echoes the Kaddish (yit–gadal…) even as it stands in dramatic contrast to the same root’s meaning in that ancient prayer:  Yit-agel is a slow process of “coming full circle.”  The Kaddish, however, hopes for results quickly, in a time close at hand/ba’agalah u-viz’man kariv.

The poet calls the world that he comes to recognize by a rare name based upon the Hebrew word meaning, “place.”  Throughout the poem, he paints elaborately with the root color of that word:  The one who despaired of a tranquil place in the beginning finds that there is within him an expanding world-place; in that place he perceives that loss is a condition of all existence.  This is my place, he says.  If there is tranquility, it is to be found in the presence of loss.

The conversation between the Kaddish and the poet becomes more provocative at the end:  The Kaddish proposes to magnify and sanctify God’s Name in the world.  For the poet, it is the human who must be magnified and sanctified, strengthened and dedicated to living his life in the presence of loss.  May it happen quickly, at a time close at hand.

(Click here for text of Mourner’s Kaddish)